Air Quotes

The body is a funny piece of meat. How it inflates and deflates in order to keep you alive. But how simple words can fill you up or pierce the air out of you. ~ Elizabeth Acevedo

Sweaty palms. check. shaky bones. check. the feeling that all oxygen in the air has been replaced by helium. yup. ~ David Levithan

She knew now why she had come up here. It was so that she might feel like this - as if she was upheld far away from things - as if she had left everything behind - almost as if she had fallen awake again. There was no perfume in the air, but all was still and sweet and clear. ~ Frances Hodgson Burnett

Illium, with his wings of silver-kissed blue and a face designed to seduce both males and females, not to mention his ability to do the most impossible acrobatics in the air, would provide a worthy diversion. The fact that he'd decided to ditch half his clothing was just icing on the cake. ~ Nalini Singh

In the entire circle of the year there are no days so delightful as those of a fine October, when the trees are bare to the mild heavens, and the red leaves bestrew the road, and you can feel the breath of winter, morning and evening - no days so calm, so tenderly solemn, and with such a reverent meekness in the air. ~ Alexander Smith

In almost every instance, air and water quality goals were met more cheaply and quickly when we taxed pollution than when we tried to regulate it directly. ~ Bob Frank

Must the Earth forever be arranged like an ocean steamer, with large, luxurious rooms and luxurious food for a select few, and underneath in the steerage, where the great mass can barely breathe from dirt and the poisonous air? ~ Various

If you're looking to freelance, just get as many gigs going as you can, and you can make it work. It's about getting as many side projects as possible, keeping as many balls in the air as you can, and what you're doing, basically, is diversifying your portfolio, with the same kinds of rewards. One falls through, and you still have another one to work on. ~ Chris Hardwick

I want people to understand and recognize that when it comes to dating, you're not as crazy as you think you are. Everyone needs love. We need it like air or water. We just don't know how to get it. ~ Leslye Headland

The shadows were daunted only by the light that encircled Tom. They screeched their howling revolt into the night air, but no matter how many, or how loud and shrill their cries, the light could not be dimmed. ~ Diane M. Walker

The smell of her hair, the taste of her mouth, the feeling of her skin seemed to have got inside him, or into the air all round him. She had become a physical necessity. ~ George Orwell

We all travelled light, taking with us only what we considered to be the bare essentials of life. When we opened our luggage for Customs inspection, the contents of our bags were a fair indication of character and interests. Thus Margo's luggage contained a multitude of diaphanous garments, three books on slimming, and a regiment of small bottles each containing some elixir guaranteed to cure acne. Leslie's case held a couple of roll-top pullovers and a pair of trousers which were wrapped round two revolvers, an air-pistol, a book called Be Your Own Gunsmith, and a large bottle of oil that leaked. Larry was accompanied by two trunks of books and a brief-case containing his clothes. Mother's luggage was sensibly divided between clothes and various volumes on cooking and gardening. I travelled with only those items that I thought necessary to relieve the tedium of a long journey: four books on natural history, a butterfly net, a dog, and a jam-jar full of caterpillars all in imminent danger of turning into chrysalids. Thus, by our standards fully equipped, we left the clammy shores of England. ~ Gerald Durrell

I don't speak, I float in the air wrapped in a sheet
I'm not a real person, I'm a ghost trapped in a beat ~ Eminem

All four of the boys were frozen, mesmerized, the weirdest chill washing over their skin while they watched this miraculous growing animal devouring the earth in every direction, every direction where there was grass and not bothering them at all on the pavement. The fire came as high as their waists, their chests, gorgeous beyond anything they'd seen, the rippling orange sheets hanging in the air like a desert mirage, like something that was there and not there. Black smoke curled above the flames, announcing to the neighborhood this very private thing that Albie had made. Fire! Fire! they'd be calling in the industrial park, even though it was already starting to die out around the edges. The fire needed so much. The boys could see it looking for more grass, anything to keep itself alive. It would have happily burned them up if it meant going for another minute. ~ Ann Patchett

Again and again, the cicada's untiring cry pierced the sultry summer air like a needle at work on thick cotton cloth. ~ Yukio Mishima

Some men, as they age, grow kinder. I am not one of those, for I have seen how the cosmere can mistreat the innocent - and that leaves me disinclined toward kindness. Some men, as they age, grow wiser. I am not one of those, for wisdom and I have always been at cross-purposes, and I have yet to learn the tongue in which she speaks. Some men, as they age, grow more cynical. I, fortunately, am not one of those. If I were, the very air would warp around me, sucking in all emotion, leaving only scorn.
Other men...other men, as they age, merely grow stranger. I fear that I am one of those. I am the bones of a foreign species left drying on the plain that was once, long ago, a sea. A curiosity, perhaps a reminder, that all has not always been as it is now. ~ Brandon Sanderson

Encouragement is like oxygen to the human spirit. Don't forget you're carrying someone else's air. Encourage them; help them breathe. ~ Jeremy Riddle

About the whole mansion and domain there hung an atmosphere peculiar to themselves and their immediate vicinity - an atmosphere which had no affinity with the air of heaven, but which had reeked up from the decayed trees, and the gray wall, and the silent tarn - a pestilent and mystic vapor, dull, sluggish, faintly discernible, and leaden-hue ~ Edgar Allan Poe

His words hung around, too, leaving their brain stain on the air. ~ Karen Russell

He asked that God remember those who had died and he asked that the living gathered together here remember that the corn grows by the will of God and beyond that will there is neither corn nor growing nor light nor air nor rain nor anything at all save only darkness. Then they ate. ~ Cormac McCarthy

The bar is in full swing, and floating rounds of cocktails permeate the garden outside, until the air is alivewith chatter and laughter, and casual innuendo and introductions forgotten on the spot, and enthusiastic meetings between women who never knew each other's names. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

Not if we kill them - " I began, only to cut off when a sudden rushing noise filled the air. And Ray grabbed my gun and went ballistic on something on the wall over our heads.
"Die! Die! Die!" he screamed, emptying the clip and causing spent shells to rain down all around us. And okay, maybe I'd been wrong about the calm thing. Because he was just standing there, trembling and panting and staring
At the air-conditioning vent that he'd just shot the crap out of.
" - first." I took my smoking gun out of his limp fingers and patted him on the back. "See? That's the spirit. ~ Karen Chance

What babe new born is this that in a manger cries? Near on her lowly bed his happy mother lies. Oh, see the air is shaken with white and heavenly wings
This is the Lord of all the earth, this is the King of Kings. ~ Richard Watson Gilder

Puck swung the cannon around in anger. The nozzle spun and hit Sabrina in the chest. The force was so pawerful she was knocked right off the platform and fell backward off the tower. She saw sky above her and felt the wind in her hair. How ironic, she thought, as she fell to her certain death, that at that moment she would have given anything to be a giant goose again.
Air rushed past Sabrina's ears and suddenly she felt her back tingling again. A moment later she was hanging upside down, inches from the ground. She looked up to find her savior, only to find that her her wasn't a person but a long, furry tail sticking out of the back of her pants. It was wrapped around a beam in the tower a kept her swinging there like a monkey.
Puck floated down to her, his wings flapping softly enough to allow him to hover.
"I bet you think this is hilarious. Look what you did to me with your stupid pranks. I have a tail!" she raged.
Puck's face was trembling. "I'm sorry."
"What?" Sabrina said blankly.
"I almost killed you. I'm sorry, Sabrina," he said, rubbing his eyes on his filthy hoodie. He lifted her off the tower and set her on the ground.
"Since when do you care?" Sabrina said, still stunned by the boy's apology. ~ Michael Buckley

She's a mortal danger without knowing it,
Undreamed of in her own dreams exquisite,
A roseleaf ambush where love lurks to seize
The unwary heart. The unwary eye that sees
Her smile sees pearled perfection. She can knit
Grace from a twine of air. The heavens sit
In every gesture. Of divinities, She's most divine. ~ Edmond Rostand

Summer is a Latvian chicken. We make foolish choices. We think we're young again. We run with outstretched arms toward an object of love and it pecks us and pecks us until we're standing there snot-nosed and teary in the middle of Astor Place and the sun sets fire to our Penguin shirts and all that is left to do is go to our air-conditioned homes and ponder the cruelty of our finest season. ~ Gary Shteyngart

But she could be made from air, from the ether that binds the stars in a patchwork. ~ Pierce Brown

I drift through forests in my dreams, I swim the lake I imagine for myself when I'm sad. It's so blue and clear. I scoop some water into my hands as I tread water and I can see right through it, almost as if it's air. Tiny, luminescent fish live at the bottom of the pool and wink at me as I swim naked and free above them, my hair spilling out around me. ~ Sarah Michelle Lynch

If they survive, today's children will inherit a world that our fathers and grandfathers have ravaged, where the seas are acidic cesspools that the whales have fled, where rain forests are Indian memories never to return, and where human greed has plundered Mother Earth's innards and turned human genes into factories for profit. They will inherit a diminished planet where fresh water is increasingly rare, and where fresh air is a commodity ... We live in a world that fears and hates its young. How else can one explain the bequest of such a foul, polluted, and hollow inheritance? ~ Mumia Abu-Jamal

A lot of the time it feels like ... music is some sort of excuse to be a human. It's kind of like people need that excuse to go and put their arms in the air and sing their hearts out. ~ Marcus Mumford

To him who in the love of Nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language; for his gayer hours
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile
And eloquence of beauty, and she glides
Into his darker musings, with a mild
And healing sympathy, that steals away
Their sharpness, ere he is aware. When thoughts
Of the last bitter hour come like a blight
Over thy spirit, and sad images
Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,
And breathless darkness, and the narrow house,
Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart; -
Go forth, under the open sky, and list
To Nature's teachings, while from all around -
Earth and her waters, and the depths of air -
Comes a still voice -
Yet a few days, and thee
The all-beholding sun shall see no more
In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground,
Where thy pale form was laid, with many tears,
Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist
Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim
Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again,
And, lost each human trace, surrendering up
Thine individual being, shalt thou go
To mix for ever with the elements,
To be a brother to the insensible rock
And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain
Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak
Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould.
Yet not to thine etern ~ William Cullen Bryant

I wish i Could throw a stone high in the air, keep looking at that and never want it to come back or disappear. that is just what our life is we want it to stay high and never come to an end. On the other hand we dont work that much for it ~ Ahad Aadi

To be white, or straight, or male, or middle class is to be simultaneously ubiquitious and invisible. You're everywhere you look, you're the standard against which everyone else is measured. You're like water, like air. People will tell you they went to see a "woman doctor" or they will say they went to see "the doctor." People will tell you they have a "gay colleague" or they'll tell you about a colleague. A white person will be happy to tell you about a "Black friend," but when that same person simply mentions a "friend," everyone will assume the person is white. Any college course that doesn't have the word "woman" or "gay" or "minority" in its title is a course about men, heterosexuals, and white people. But we call those courses "literature," "history" or "political science."
This invisibility is political. ~ Michael S. Kimmel

something glorious a minute later. How could anyone not have an orgasm? While she didn't ask for his cock, her mouth opened as she gulped in air. Perhaps it was when she dropped her head back that he understood she was ever so close, because he shut off the vibrator and pulled it out. ~ Vella Day

Choice
I needed it like I needed air.
Bit no one could hear me.
No one could listen.
No words. No sound.
No voice.
I couldn't even dream myself away.
Choices were made.
None of them mine.
At first I wondered if it was hell.
And then I knew it was. ~ Mary E. Pearson

The air changes. Then that invisible spider crawls up my spine, tickling the hairs behind my neck.

I have come to know this spider these last couple of years. It whispers there's something else in the room, breathing with you, watching you, grinning at you.

I hate that damn spider. ~ Rin Chupeco

mad maddie: I GOT ACCEPTED TO SANTA CRUZ!!!!
SnowAngel: omg!!!
zoegirl: maddie!!!! yay!!!!!
mad maddie: i know! it's incredible!
SnowAngel: *squeals and hugs sweet maddie*
SnowAngel: tell us every single detail!!!
mad maddie: well, i got home from school and saw this big thick envelope on the kitchen counter, with "Santa Cruz Admissions Office" as the return address. i got really fidgety and just started screaming, right there in the house. no one was there but me, so i could be as loud as i wanted.
zoegirl: omg!!!
mad maddie: i took a deep breath and tried to calm down, but my hands were shaking. i opened the envelope and pulled out a folder that said, "Welcome to Santa Cruz!" inside was a letter that said, "Dear Madigan. You're in!"
mad maddie: isn't that cool? i LOVE that, that instead of being all prissy and formal, they're like, "you're in! yahootie!"
SnowAngel: oh maddie, i am sooooo happy for u!
mad maddie: i ran out to my car all jumping and hopping around and drove to ian's, cuz i knew neither of u would be home yet. i showed him my letter and he hugged me really hard and lifted me into the air. it was AWESOME.
zoegirl: i'm so proud of u, maddie!
SnowAngel: me 2! ~ Lauren Myracle

I used to be surprised and a little annoyed when characters would reappear in my mind, itching to be in another story. Now I realize it's part of the deal, that you create these people out of thin air but then, if you do it right, they actually live. ~ Peter Orner

... Magic is often a tricky thing. Often it is explainable. People fly through the air in planes and live underwater in submarines. Plants grow within weeks and cities operate and sustain millions of people. A person can talk to practically anyone almost anywhere around the world instantly. People's images are transported by photo in the time it takes to press a button. Dinosaurs seem real, huge apes exist, and other worlds are a movie ticket away. ~ Obert Skye

We both grew so used to each other, so comfortable with the naturalness and ease of our friendship, that we became sloppy about keeping our relationship a secret. It was not that we were physically demonstrative or obviously in love, more that it had become impossible for us to hide our close involvement. We had gradually acquired the unmistakable air of old-love: finishing each other's sentences and speaking to each other with an offhand, presuming intimacy that was eventually noticed. ~ Kate Kerrigan

The law says if you poison the water, you'll die. The law says that if you poison the air, you'll suffer. The law says if you degrade where you live, you'll suffer ... If you don't learn that, you can only suffer. There's no discussion with this law. ~ Oren Lyons

i hold on to
the way the air feels in october
it brings out the best in me ~ Madisen Kuhn

I went to the window, opening the pierced shutters to look out over the sleeping city. The moon was waxing and hung half-full like some exotic silver jewel just over the horizon. From the courtyard below rose the scent of jasmine on the cool night air. A slender vine had wound its way up to the balcony, and I reached out, pinching off a single creamy white blossom. I lifted it to my nose, drinking in the thick sweetness of it as it filled my head, sending my senses reeling. There was something narcotic about that jasmine, something carnal and ethereal at the same time. I crushed the petals between my fingers, taking the scent onto my skin. It was not a fragrance to wear alone. It was too rich, too heady, too full of sensuality and promise. It was a fragrance for silken cushions and damp naked flesh and moonlit beds. I rubbed at my fingers, but the scent clung tightly, keeping me company as I sat in the window, listening to a song I had almost forgot and thinking of Gabriel Starke and the five years that stretched barrenly between us. ~ Deanna Raybourn

I'm an Air Force officer first, a pilot second and then Nicole. The female part is last ... My job is to be the best right wingman that I can be. ~ Nicole Malachowski

It's the ratings, stupid, don't you know? They've got us putting more fuzz and wuzz on the air, cop-show stuff. ~ Dan Rather

Conceiv'd out of the fullest heat and pulse of European feudalism -personifying ill unparalleled ways the medieval aristocracy, its towering spirit of ruthless and gigantic caste, with its own peculiar air and arrogance (no mere imitation) -only one of the "wolfish earls" so plenteous in the plays themselves, or some born descendant and knower, might seem to be the true author of those amazing works -works in some respects greater than anything else ill recorded literature. ~ Walt Whitman

Already it is twilight down in the Laredito. Bats fly forth from their roostings in courthouse and tower and circle the quarter. The air is full of the smell of burning charcoal. Children and dogs squat by the mud stoops and gamecocks flap and settle in the branches of the fruit trees. They go afoot, these comrades, down along a bare adobe wall. Band music carries dimly from the square. They pass a watercart in the street and they pass a hole in the wall where by the light of a small forgefire an old man beats out shapes of metal. They pass in a doorway a young girl whose beauty becomes the flowers about.

They arrive at last before a wooden door. It is hinged into a larger door or gate and all must step over the foot-high sill where a thousand boots have scuffled away the wood, where fools in their hundreds have tripped or fallen or tottered drunkenly into the street. They pass along a ramada in a courtyard by an old grape arbor where small fowl nod in the dusk among the gnarled and barren vines and they enter a cantina where the lamps are lit and they cross stooping under a low beam to a bar and belly up one two three.

There is an old disordered Mennonite in this place and he turns to study them. A thin man in a leather weskit, a black and straightbrim hat set square on his head, a thin rim of whiskers. The recruits order glasses of whiskey and drink them down and order more. There are monte games at tables by the wall and there are whores at another ~ Cormac McCarthy

I don't see my artist friends as any more neurotic or addiction-prone than the others. The roommates I have had who were into triathlons or environmentalism were just as crazy as the poets, just as prone to tears over gardening or air conditioners, just as ready to kite a cheque or binge on cookie dough. ~ Russell Smith

Love is an element which though physically unseen is as real as air or water. It is an acting, living, moving force ... it moves in waves and currents like those of the ocean. ~ Prentice Mulford

He was aware, suddenly, of the chill condensing clammily on his skin, the smell of damp cobblestones, of the very air flowing in and out of his lings.
But most of all he was aware of the woman, this woman, his woman, standing so proudly, waiting patiently for him, only him.
He walked toward her and knew with every fiber of his being that he walked to life itself. ~ Elizabeth Hoyt

When you love someone that much and that person is away from you, sometimes it literally feels like you can't breathe, as if your body is aching for air. And then that person walks into the room, and all that ache inside of you, all that longing, dissolves and you feel yourself breathe again. But it's as if he takes the same breath with you. You're both one. ~ Diane Les Becquets

How much change can a person absorb before everything loses meaning Living for its own sake isn't life. People need meaning as much as they need air. ~ Daniel H. Wilson

I prayed to what all things hold in common. I prayed to what makes life. I thought about the elements of the universe, the rocks, the stars, the air, other living things. I tried to get the perspective of what's behind all that. I prayed to the force that brings things into existence. I thought this force encompassed all it created. My God was transcendent, and my God was also immanent. God ran in my veins. God lived and died and lived again in every atom of the universe. ~ Margaret D. McGee

What strikes me most forcibly in the ants and beetles and other worthy insects is their astounding seriousness. They run to and fro with such a solemn air, as though their life were something of such importance! A man the lord of creation the highest being, stares at them, if you please, and they pay no attention to him. Why, a gnat will even settle on the lord of creation's nose, and make use of him for food. It's most offensive. And, on the other hand, how is their life inferior to ours? And why shouldn't they take themselves seriously, if we are to be allowed to take ourselves seriously? ~ Ivan Turgenev

They dragged the air mattress up to the widow's walk and eventually figured out how it was supposed to inflate, but Lucas had to read the instructions in Spanish because the English ones were nearly incomprehensible. Hilariously so.
"Insert mouth to the purpose inflation," Helen whispered.
...
"Expel lung into inflator tube," Lucas whispered back. "That sounds like it would hurt. ~ Josephine Angelini

I want my goddamn Luna back," he breathed, stealing the air from my lungs. "I don't want you to leave me alone. I want you bugging my ass for random shit again. I wanna see your fucking face first thing in the morning, even if you don't bring me my coffee anymore. I wanna make you something to eat so you don't end up with Salmonella from that shit you try to cook, ~ Mariana Zapata

You climb only because the mountain allows it. If it says wait, then you must wait, and when it allows you to go, then you must struggle and strain in the thin air with all your might. Listening to the mountain and having patience on it are the keys to survival. ~ Bear Grylls

Unfair," I said as Captain Goode opened a door to reveal a beautiful library. The room seemed to stretch on forever. Bookshelves lined all the walls. Hundreds, thousands of volumes. The air carried that wonderfully comfortable and musty scent of dust, age, and wisdom that only worn books can emit. ~ Tarun Shanker

No clouds gathered in the skies and the polluted streams became clear, whilst celestial music rang through the air and the angels rejoiced with gladness. With no selfish or partial joy but for the sake of the law they rejoiced, for creation engulfed in the ocean of pain was now to obtain release. ~ Gautama Buddha

I can't wear this," she said from inside the dressing room. "It's too small."
"Let's see," Nick said. "Come on out."
"Get me a bigger size. A lot bigger."
Nick opened the door and looked in at Kate. "Whoa," he said on a gush of air. His pupils dilated to the point where his brown eyes were almost totally black, and Kate decided the dress must look better than she'd first thought.
"Well?" she asked.
"I think I'm in love," Nick said. "But then my brain isn't completely engaged right now. That's not where the blood is flowing."
"Too much information" Kate said. "It would have been enough to tell me I look okay."
"Honey you look a lot better than okay."
"You don't think I look slutty?"
"Not at these prices," Nick said. ~ Janet Evanovich

There's a sweet sound," he said, slashing at the air. "Flap closer, Snow. I mean to make your feathers fly. ~ George R R Martin

There was something special about a carnival at night. Bright lights pierced the darkness; the tinkling music of the merry-go-round provided the perfect background for the shrill calls of the carnival workers; the giggles of the people aiming fake rifles at fake ducks were full of contagious fun; the distant shrieks coming from the roller coaster and the top of the Ferris wheel filled the air; and a warm breeze carried the tantalizing aromas of cotton candy and hot buttered popcorn. ~ Marilyn Kaye

Long I have known and feared this day would come. Like the circle of Earth, the circle of life is changing. Here in the north, there are those who can still feel, see, and smell the changes wrought in and around Earth by Money Chiefs. The air is no longer clean, winter grows warmer, rivers flood without a sign, and the soil, once dark and rich, lies pale and weak. Bears, wolves, and other forest Spirits will soon go the way of the buffalo, for their food dwindles like birds that once ruled the skies. ~ Frederic M. Perrin

Werner thinks of her, whether he wishes to or not. Girl with a cane, girl in a gray dress, girl made of mist. That air of otherworldliness in the snarls of her hair and the fearlessness of her step. She takes up residence inside him, a living doppelgänger to face down the dead Viennese girl who haunts him every night. ~ Anthony Doerr

It is sad that the air is the only thing we share. No matter how close we get to each other, there is always air between us. ~ Yoko Ono

In New York the sky is bluer, and the grass is greener, and the girls are prettier, and the steaks are thicker, and the buildings are higher, and the streets are wider, and the air is finer, than the sky, or the grass, or the girls, or the steaks, or the air of any place else in the world. ~ Edna Ferber

The air is so crisp it gives me a brief, delusive sense of health and youth.
those I don't have but I have learned not to scorn the substitutes: quiet, plenty of time, and a job to spend it on. ~ Wallace Stegner

The BBC, during its 24 hours on the air, plays a very wide range of stuff. And it's not commercial. ~ Robin Trower

You cannot hide from danger. Death floats on the air, creeps through the window, comes with the handshake of a stranger. If we stop living because we fear death, then we have already died.
-Raistlin Majere ~ Margaret Weis

My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Psalm 22:1 We here behold the Saviour in the depth of his sorrows. No other place so well shows the griefs of Christ as Calvary, and no other moment at Calvary is so full of agony as that in which his cry rends the air--"My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" At this moment physical weakness was united with acute mental torture from the shame and ignominy through which he had to pass; and to make his grief culminate with emphasis, he suffered spiritual agony surpassing all expression, resulting from the departure of his Father's presence. This was the black midnight of his horror; then it was that he descended the abyss of suffering. No man can enter into the full meaning of these words. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

A modern, autonomous, and thoroughly trained Air Force in being at all times will not alone be sufficient, but without it there can be no national security. ~ Henry H. Arnold

What is it that wells up so suddenly and menacingly under my heart, swallowing the soft air of melancholy? Are you pleased with us, dark night? What is it you conceal under your mantle, that grabs invisibly and powerfully at my soul? A rich balm drips off your fingers from a bundle of poppies. You raise up the heavy wings of the soul – darkly and inexpressibly we are moved. I see an earnest face startled with joy – softly and reverently it inclines toward me, and under endlessly entangled locks
appears the cherished face of our Mother. How poor and childish the light seems to me now − how welcome and
blessed is the day's departure. ~ Novalis

As Daenerys Targaryen rose to her feet, her black hissed, pale smoke venting from its mouth and nostrils. The other two pulled away from her breasts and added their voices to the call, translucent wings unfolding and stirring the air, and for the first time in hundreds of years, the night came alive with the music of dragons. ~ George R R Martin

There is a form of eminence which does not depend on fate; it is an air which sets us apart and seems to prtend great things; it is the value which we unconsciously attach to ourselves; it is the quality which wins us deference of others; more than birth, position, or ability, it gives us ascendance. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Corporations are poisoning our air and water while at the same time lining the pockets of elected officials with political contributions. ~ Gloria Reuben

But Hood was not yet done with her. He swung her up again, spun and once more hammered her onto the stone. 'I have had,' the Jaghut roared, and into the air she went again, and down once more, 'enough' - with a sob the crushed, broken body was yanked from the ground again - 'of- 'your- justice! ~ Steven Erikson

Now That I Am in Madrid I Can Think "

I think of you
and the continents brilliant and arid
and the slender heart you are sharing my share of with the American air
as the lungs I have felt sonorously subside slowly greet each morning
and your brown lashes flutter revealing two perfect dawns colored by New York

see a vast bridge stetching to the humbled outskirts with only you
Standing on the edge of the purple like an only tree
and in Toledo the olive groves' soft blue look at the hills with silver
like glasses like an old ladies hair
It's well known that God and I don't get along together
It's just a view of the brass works for me, I don't care about the Moors
seen through you the great works of death, you are greater

you are smiling, you are emptying the world so we can be alone together. ~ Frank O'Hara

YEN
What happens if you take a cup? Put it to your lips. A cup of desire. Of dazzling colour. Of intoxicating aroma. You can't resist. Drink. And in the bottom of the cup. There is a fish. And the fish says "You have uncovered me! Now I am condemned. To die."
What happens if you find a box? 35mm by 35mm exactly. And are curious. You open it quickly. Of course. And inside there is an eye. And the eye seems to think that the box is its exclusive property. And fixes you with a terrifying glare.
What happens if you catch a soft sound? A voice whispering in the air. Above the tree tops. And you can't quite hear what it is saying. But you have to listen. So you float up. Then you find you can't come down again. When the conversation is finished. ~ Jay Woodman

He divided the inhabitants of this world into two groups, into those who had loved and those who had not. It was a horrible aristocracy, apparently, for those who had no capacity for love (or rather for suffering in love) could not be said to be alive and certainly would not live again after their death. They were a kind of straw population, filling the world with their meaningless laughter and tears and chatter and disappearing still lovable and vain into thin air. For this distinction he cultivated his own definition of love that was like no other and that had gathered all its bitterness and pride from his odd life. He regarded love as a sort of cruel malady through which the elect are required to pass in their late youth and from which they emerge, pale and wrung, but ready for the business of living. There was (he believed) a great repertory of errors mercifully impossible to human beings who had recovered from this illness. Unfortunately there remained to them a host of failings, but at least (from among many illustrations) they never mistook a protracted amiability for the whole conduct of life, they never again regarded any human being, from a prince to a servant, as a mechanical object. ~ Thornton Wilder

I cooked with so many of the greats: Tom Colicchio, Eric Ripert, Wylie Dufresne, Grant Achatz. Rick Bayless taught me not one but two amazing mole sauces, the whole time bemoaning that he never seemed to know what to cook for his teenage daughter. Jose Andres made me a classic Spanish tortilla, shocking me with the sheer volume of viridian olive oil he put into that simple dish of potatoes, onions, and eggs. Graham Elliot Bowles and I made gourmet Jell-O shots together, and ate leftover cheddar risotto with Cheez-Its crumbled on top right out of the pan.
Lucky for me, Maria still includes me in special evenings like this, usually giving me the option of joining the guests at table, or helping in the kitchen. I always choose the kitchen, because passing up the opportunity to see these chefs in action is something only an idiot would do. Susan Spicer flew up from New Orleans shortly after the BP oil spill to do an extraordinary menu of all Gulf seafood for a ten-thousand-dollar-a-plate fund-raising dinner Maria hosted to help the families of Gulf fishermen. Local geniuses Gil Langlois and Top Chef winner Stephanie Izard joined forces with Gale Gand for a seven-course dinner none of us will ever forget, due in no small part to Gil's hoisin oxtail with smoked Gouda mac 'n' cheese, Stephanie's roasted cauliflower with pine nuts and light-as-air chickpea fritters, and Gale's honey panna cotta with rhubarb compote and insane little chocolate cookies. Stephanie and I bonded over ~ Stacey Ballis

I grip the edge of a sidewalk cafe table to keep from falling. The diners stare in alarm, but I don't care. I'm reeling, and I gasp for air. How can I have been so stupid? How could I have ever for a moment believed I wasn't in love with him? ~ Stephanie Perkins

Air power is new to all our countries. It brings advantages to some and weakens others; it calls for readjustment everywhere. ~ Charles Lindbergh

The years of disillusion, the long debate of who-belongs-to-who, gathered at the mighty feet of the Bangladesh Liberation War like flood waters rising, gathering thick weeds and crusty dirt and pulling it all in one direction. At times, when the body count was high and the air tasted like bloody ash, the way mass graves smell, Sariyah had wondered what progress was supposed to taste like. Often it tasted like unanswered questions, stuck in the teeth. Bangladesh had given her the true answer, though: progress at its best is home-grown. It should taste like joy – pure, unhindered joy. Like the freshest sun-ripened mango on a tree, a little sunrise in her palm. ~ Katherine Russell

An endless scream pierced the frigid night air and shook the world with its rage and sorrow. The aged stone and brick that had withstood the great quake over a hundred years ago now trembled before its pain, and even the austere grimace of the lonely grotesque, its only witness, softened in pity. ~ Ava Zavora

Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back. That's part of what it means to be alive. But inside our heads - at least that's where I imagine it - there's a little room where we store those memories. A room like the stacks in this library. And to understand the workings of our own heart we have to keep on making new reference cards. We have to dust things off every once in awhile, let in fresh air, change the water in the flower vases. In other words, you'll live forever in your own private library. ~ Haruki Murakami

I still had moments when my nerves got to me, but whenever I'd start to get anxious, Kyla Ross would remind me, "Simone, just do what you do in practice." And before I went out for each event, she'd high-five me and say, "Just like practice, Simone!" I'd say the same thing to her when it was her turn to go up. "Just like practice" became our catchphrase.
As I walked onto the mat to do my floor exercise, I held on to that phrase like it was a lifeline, because I was about to perform a difficult move I'd come up with in practice - a double flip in the layout position with a half twist out. The way it happened was, I'd landed short on a double layout full out earlier that year during training, and I'd strained my calf muscle on the backward landing. Aimee didn't want me to risk a more severe injury, so she suggested I do the double layout - body straight with legs together and fully extended as I flipped twice in the air - then add a half twist at the end. That extra half twist meant I'd have to master a very tricky blind forward landing, but it would put less stress on my calves.
I thought the new combination sounded incredibly cool, so I started playing around with it until I was landing the skill 95 percent of the time. At the next Nationals Camp, I demonstrated the move for Martha and she thought it looked really good, so we went ahead and added it to the second tumbling pass of my floor routine. I'd already performed the combination at national meets that year, bu ~ Simone Biles

There are some short essays that are very grave, and most contemporary novels are lighter than air. ~ Fran Lebowitz

Groves of orange and lemon perfumed the air, their ripe fruit glowing among the foliage; while, sloping to the plains, extensive vineyards spread their treasures. Beyond these, woods and pastures, and mingled towns and hamlets stretched towards the sea, on whose bright surface gleamed many a distant sail; while, over the whole scene was diffused the purple glow of evening. ~ Ann Radcliffe

White-crested waves crash on the shore. The masts sway violently, every which way. In the gray sky the gulls are circling like white flakes. Rain squalls blow past like gray slanting sails, and blue gaps open in the sky. The air brightens.
A cold silvery evening. The moon is overhead, and down below, in the water; and all around it-a wide frame of old, hammered, scaly silver. Etched on the silver-silent black fishing boats, tiny black needles of masts, little black men casting invisible lines into the silver. And the only sounds are the occasional plashing of an oar, the creaking of an oarlock, the springlike leap and flip-flop of a fish. ("The North") ~ Yevgeny Zamyatin

Her laughter was everywhere, and at night her eyes shone in the sky. The air he breathed was Susie; whatever he touched was her too. ~ T.F. Powys

When one speaks of solitaries, one always takes too much for granted. One supposes that people know what one is talking about. No, they do not. They have never seen a solitary, they have simply hated him without knowing him. They have been his neighbors who used him up, and the voices in the next room that tempted him. They have incited things against him, so that they made a great noise and drowned him out. Children were in league against him, when he was tender and a child, and with every growth he grew up against the grown-ups. They tracked him to his hiding place, like a beast to be hunted, and his long youth had no closed season. And when he refused to be worn out and got away, they cried out upon that which emanated from him, and called it ugly and cast suspicion upon it. And when he would not listen, they became more distinct and ate away his food and breathed out his air and spat into his poverty so that it became repugnant to him. They brought down disrepute upon him as upon an infectious person and cast stones at him to make him go away more quickly. And they were right in their ancient instinct: for he was indeed their foe.

But then, when he did not raise his eyes, they began to reflect. They suspected that with all this they had done what he wanted; that they had fortified him in his solitude and helped him to separate himself from them for ever. And now they changed about and, resorting to the final, the extreme, used that other resistance: fame. And a ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Midnighter: I told you this wasn't going to end well...
Bendix: ...but...I did what you...what the Authority...never could...fixed earth... Midnighter: No. You just gave them peace through corporate control and ignorance... through mindless consumerism.
Bendix: Bulls*%t! The air is clean...no wars...people are happier...you can't deny...it's a finer world. ~ Ed Brubaker

I will lay thy stones with fair colors (Isa. 54:11).

The stones from the wall said, "We come from the mountains far away, from the sides of the craggy hills. Fire and water have worked on us for ages, but made us only crags. Human hands have made us into a dwelling where the children of your immortal race are born, and suffer, and rejoice, and find rest and shelter, and learn the lessons set them by our Maker and yours. But we have passed through much to fit us for this. Gunpowder has rent our very heart; pickaxes have cleaved and broken us, it seemed to us often with out design or meaning, as we lay misshapen stones in the quarry; but gradually we were cut into blocks, and some of us were chiseled with finer instruments to a sharper edge. But we are complete now, and are in our places, and are of service.

"You are in the quarry still, and not complete, and therefore to you, as once to us, much is inexplicable. But you are destined for a higher building, and one day you will be placed in it by hands not human, a living stone in a heavenly temple."

In the still air the music lies unheard;In the rough marble beauty hides unseen;
To make the music and the beauty needs
The master's touch, the sculptor's chisel keen.
Great Master, touch us with Thy skillful hands;
Let not the music that is in us die!
Great Sculptor, hew and polish us; nor let,
Hidden and lost, thy form within us lie! ~ Mrs. Charles E. Cowman

The noise of the air base became a dull roar, and he fell asleep dreaming of James - his laugh, his smile, and the pine box he'd come home in. ~ Garrett Leigh

So I take it you and Gansey get along, then?" Maura's expression was annoyingly knowing.
"Mom."
"Orla told me about his muscle car," Maura continued. Her voice was still angry and artificially bright. The fact that Blue was well aware that she'd earned it made the sting of it even worse. "You aren't planning on kissing him, are you?"
"Mom, that will never happen," Blue assured her. "You did meet him, didn't you?"
"I wasn't sure if driving an old, loud Camaro was the male equivalent of shredding your T-shirts and gluing cardboard trees to your bedroom walls."
"Trust me," Blue said. "Gansey and I are nothing like each other. And they aren't cardboard. They're repurposed canvas."
"The environment breathes a sigh of relief." Maura attempted another sip of her drink; wrinkling her nose, she shot a glare at Persephone. Persephone looked martyred. After a pause, Maura noted, in a slightly softer voice, "I'm not entirely happy about you're getting in a car without air bags."
"Our car doesn't have air bags," Blue pointed out.
Maura picked a long strand of Persephone's hair from the rim of her glass. "Yes, but you always take your bike."
Blue stood up. She suspected that the green fuzz of the sofa was now adhered to the back of her leggings. "Can I go now? Am I in trouble?"
"You are in trouble. I told you to stay away from him and you didn't," Maura said. "I just haven't decided what to do about it yet. My feelings are hurt. I've consul ~ Maggie Stiefvater

As Brother Francis readily admitted, his mastery of pre-Deluge English was far from masterful yet. The way nouns could sometimes modify other nouns in that tongue had always been one of his weak points. In Latin, as in most simple dialects of the region, a construction like servus puer meant about the same thing as puer servus, and even in English slave boy meant boy slave. But there the similarity ended. He had finally learned that house cat did not mean cat house, and that a dative of purpose or possession, as in mihi amicus, was somehow conveyed by dog food or sentry box even without inflection. But what of a triple appositive like fallout survival shelter? Brother Francis shook his head. The Warning on Inner Hatch mentioned food, water, and air; and yet surely these were not necessities for the fiends of Hell. At times, the novice found pre-Deluge English more perplexing than either Intermediate Angelology or Saint Leslie's theological calculus. ~ Walter M. Miller Jr.

This fusion of wood and water is an entrancing thing. Without the wood the stream would be nothing: a mere thin watercourse winding through its flat meadows. Without the water the wood, on its slope and with its air of quietness and mystery and of being a world within itself, could not help being a constantly delightful thing. But water and wood, together, shading and watering and bounding each other, each give to the other something which the other does not possess, the wood giving to the stream something solid and shadowy and immemorial, the stream giving to the wood all the incomparable movement and twinkling transcience of moving water, the tree shadows standing deep in the stream, the reflection of sunlight flickering a kind of waterlight up into the shadowy branches of pine and alder. The wood and the water are here, in fact, one, for each other and with each other. It is a fusion that is almost perfect. ~ H.E. Bates

She slipped both hands into the water. Her skin looked pale and creamy below its surface. Not its usual warm bronze color. She fixed her gaze on the place where the water met the air, on the strange bend that made it seem as though her hands were in a different world beneath the water -
A world that moved more slowly and told stories.
The water lies. ~ Renee Ahdieh

Outside, the sleet had gotten thicker. You could hear it pebbling against the large glass windows, you could see it swirling wildly through the spotlights of street lamps. It was the kind of night when you might expect to see a skeleton flying through the air, its ragged black shroud flapping in the wind. ~ Dan Chaon

The smell of the earth, so astoundingly fresh: it strikes Brown like a thing he might eat. His ears throb. His body feels as if it is still moving through the air. He is, he thinks, the first man ever to fly and stand at the exact same time. The war out of the machine. He holds the small bag of letters up in salute. On they come, soldiers, people, the light drizzle of gray.
Ireland.
A beautiful country. A bit savage on a man all the same.
Ireland. ~ Colum McCann